[Modding] Various Homey Pro (Early 2023) Modification suggestions

Here some info about swapping my CM4 module in Homey 2023 pro.

The best/official -unofficial way is to open Homey, desolder the (5) connections from the antennaboard to the carrier board and replace the CM4 module. The problem is that this needs solder and desolder work.

In this picture you see the 5 connections on the left of the text ‘Antenna’ that have to be desoldered and desoldered:


I replaced my CM4 module without soldering on the following way (sorry for my poor English).
Everything is at your own risk, etc. Etc… :wink:

  1. I used a CM4108032 (CM4 module with WiFi, 8GB RAM and 32 GB storage.
  2. Buy a mini wrench set. You need a set with very small size. (Very cheap set on Amazon size 3-5.5) and a flat nose pliers (translated )
  3. Make a full backup over USB with your computer/Mac
  4. Open Homey by opening the bottom with the 4 screws.
  5. Now you can unscrew the 4 nuts that holds the heatsink. (I’ve removed 2 fins to get access to the nuts).
  6. Carefully remove the heatsink and 4 spacers.
  7. Remove the CM4. It is in the carrier board.
  8. Place the new CM4. I don’t know if more storage is available (by firmware) in the feature. So for now you need a CM4 module with WiFi and more than the ‘stock’ 2 GB RAM.
  9. Push it until it is in the carrier board.
  10. Use the same or place better theatraal layer on the same spot on the heatsink (where the old one was). You need 2 sizes. I only replaced the CPU layer.
  11. Replace the spacers and the heatsink.
  12. Screw the nuts back.My advice is to screw 2 nuts back first (crossed).
  13. Blow out any ‘metal dust’ from your work.
  14. Restore firmware and test if everything is working. You need to accept a lot of safety warnings (in my case on my Mac). It is an ‘unknown usb device.
  15. If everything is working, place the other 2 nuts back, blow out again any metal dust and close the cover.
  16. Everything is working instantly here

At the moment I’m working on a better cooling solution (bigger heatsink with same mounting for a lower CPU temp) and with help of @spkesDE finding a way to make the user partition bigger. (All credits for spkesDE for this :+1:)

Related Slack discussion: Slack

Updates:

2023-04-23:
Just making my first backup over usb with the CM4108032. It is taking at least four times the time as with the old CM4 board (ca. 30 minutes for 98% complete). So it looks like it is making a backup of the complete (32GB) CM4 flash, and not only the 8GB that it is using (partition size). The file size of the backup is nearly the same Als the ‘old’ backups. But… backup process freeze at ca. 98%. After that, file size is not changing and ‘loading bar’ is not moving. Work for next week.

2023-04-29:
See a later post about replacing the heatsink for a ‘bigger’ one for more passive cooling. Temp reduction is about 10c and you can use the original case. no fan, holes or new cover are needed.

2023-04-29:
It looks like that an USB backup from a CM4 module with 32 GB will always fail. I’ve tested 2 of them and heard the same experience from someone of the community. When making the backup and comparing the ‘incompleted’ swap file with a ‘successful’ backup, then I see 6 files. 5 partitions and the 6th is in the original setting (with CM4 8 GB ~4MB) and in case of an CM4 with 32 GB very big (>20GB). Probably this is ‘empty space’ because is is possible to compress this file 6 in to some MB’s. My hope was that is it easy to just copy file 1-5 from this swap file to an older backup and use this as backup ‘workaround’ but I did not have found an app that can edit these files. Maybe that just ‘restoring’ the same file (that is renamed to a homey backup extension’ is also enough. Probably the restore will ‘fail’ on the ‘empty space’ part. I will test this when I have my dev homey hopefully next month!

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